Memorandum submitted by Dr Marian FitzGerald
SUMMARY AND
INTRODUCTION
— The problem of knife crime cannot
be tackled in isolation from other forms of violence, in particular
violence using weapons of any sort.
— An over-reliance on enforcement to
tackle knife carrying can be counter-productive and may
be less than effective in tackling knife crime as such.
— Current approaches to the problem
need re-thinking and a coherent strategy is required based on
a public health approach—ie a strategy which is geared to
prevention over the long- and medium- as well as the short-term.
The following memorandum draws on a range of
published statistical sources and also from my own current and
past research. Some of this research is published, including studies
of:
— police searches in London under section
1 of PACE (FitzGerald 1999);
— police-community relations in London
(FitzGerald, Hough et al, 2002);
— young people and street crime (FitzGerald,
Stockdale and Hale 2003);
— the role of police officers in schools
(FitzGerald and O'Connor 2004, FitzGerald 2004, 2005);
— young people "gangs" and
weapons (Young, FitzGerald, Hallsworth and Joseph 2008); and
— an international study of juvenile
violence and the effectiveness of approaches to tackle the problem
(FitzGerald, Stevens and Hale, 2004).
The findings reported also come from my unpublished
study of knife crime in three London boroughs in 2006 as part
of an evaluation for Government Office London. This includes analyses
of knife-crime data which was already being collected for the
MPs in all London boroughs at the time (albeit on a slightly different
basis from that which is now used by the Home Office to compile
national statistics) as well as detailed local analysis of the
figures undertaken by two of the three boroughs. My conclusions
are additionally informed by my experience as one of the original
members of the Operation Blunt Independent Advisory Group and
by additional insights gleaned in the course of some of the research
projects referred to above as well as my current work. These have
involved many interviews and focus groups with young people and
those working with them (including YOT staff and police officers)
who themselves have often raised the issue of knife crime in the
course of our discussions, even though this was not the explicit
focus of the research.
THE PROBLEM
OF KNIFE
CRIME
Knife crime in context
Firstly, it is important to distinguish between
knife carrying and knife crime. While knife carrying is itself
an offence, the term "knife crime" refers to a range
of violent activities which are offences in their own right and
in which a knife has been used. These acts of violence range through
murder, robbery and assault (with or without injury) and may occur
either in public or in private (with domestic violence an important
component of the violence perpetrated within the private sphere).
The most prevalent type of knife crime offence may also vary by
area and by time of day within this, such that, for example, robberies
involving knives may most commonly be committed in the late afternoon
and early evening, whereas knife crime later in the day is associated
with more general violence related to the night time economy.
The fact of a weapon of any type being used
in any of these contexts may, of course, significantly aggravate
the impact of the offence on the victim—whether physically
or psychologically; but that weapon will not necessarily be a
knife. Knives may currently be the weapon of choice for those
prepared to engage in these types of violent activity but this
may simply be a function of their relative availability; and the
possibility must also be borne in mind that the same individuals
will simply resort to the use of other weapons if a knife is not
to hand. For, example, we should never forget that Damilola Taylor
was killed with a broken bottle; and my GOL evaluation (see above)
further suggests a link between the use of knives and other weapons.
It found that knife crime offences in two London boroughs with
much higher than average levels of violent crime closely tracked
trends in gun crime in the same areas (see Figures 1a and 1b),
albeit knife crime was inevitably far more prevalent than gun
crime.
Figure 1a
Figure 1b
Whether and to what extent the use of weapons
in general has been increasing in recent years is difficult to
measure.[51]
Until last year, the only figures routinely collected by all police
forces for offences in which a weapon was used were figures for
firearms offences; yet, given the restrictions on gun ownership,
it seems likely that these represent only a small minority of
all offences involving weapons. Since April 2007 forces have been
required to provide returns to the Home Office for a limited range
of more serious offences in which knives and other sharp instruments
have physically been used. That is, the returns omit the far more
numerous cases of more minor crime, as well instances where the
threat of using a knife has been sufficient for the offender
to achieve his/her goal. And a further consideration is that the
figures may be subject to a considerable margin of error insofar
as they depend on officers who record a substantive offence remembering
additionally to "flag" the use of a knife or sharp instrument.[52]
That is, monitoring the impact of policies to
tackle the problem of knife crime as such may be difficult. However,
some inferences about trends in the use of weapons more generally
may tentatively be drawn from a number of sources, starting with
long-run trends in serious violent crime.
While economic modeling (including the Home
Office study by Field in 1990) has consistently shown a link between
violence and prosperity, the long-run trend (Figure 2) suggests
that, in the case of serious violence,[53]
this relationship may have changed over recent years. Disregarding
the figures from 2002-03 which have been distorted for all categories
of offence by changes to the police counting rules and their subsequent
re-interpretation, it appears that serious violence had actually
been rising at a faster rate than the models would have predicted
since the early 1990s.
Figure 2
SERIOUS VIOLENT CRIME VS GDP
To date, these long-run trends in serious violence
seem largely to have been ignored and still less has any research
been undertaken to identify the reasons for them. However, one
possibility is that this upturn in the level of serious violence
reflects some sort of cultural shift. This could mean either that
many more people than previously are now prepared to engage in
serious violence or that people who engage in violence have begun
more readily to use weapons in these situations so the results
are more serious. Some anecdotal evidence supporting the latter
hypothesis has come to me informally from discussions with sentencers,
one of whom observed that they had always dealt with cases of
punch-ups after the pubs shut on a Friday and Saturday night but
that, in recent years, they were seeing more serious injuries
associated with these due to an apparent increase in the use of
weapons in this context.
In addition, secondary analysis of two other
sources suggests not only that there has, indeed, been an increase
in the extent to which people are carrying weapons but also that
most of this involves weapons other than firearms. Yet
policy concerns until recently have focused almost exclusively
on the increased use of firearms and thereby risked ignoring the
wider picture. Home Office figures for offences in which a firearm
is used had begun to stabilize from 2001-02 and was showing a
reduction by 2004-05; but the number of recorded offences for
possession of an offensive weapon of any sort continued to increase
over the same period (Figure 3).
Figure 3
POSSESSION OF WEAPONS VS OFFENCES INVOLVING
FIREARMS
(Sources: Nicholas et al 2005 and Coleman
et al 2006)
The second of the sources which support the
notion that the use of other types of weapon has been increasing
faster than the rate of increase in the use of firearms is Bennett
and Holloway's 2004 study of a sample of arrestees aged 17+. This
showed that gang members were far more likely to possess weapons
and guns than arrestees who were not gang members. However, when
ex-gang members were compared with current gang members, the proportion
who had possessed a gun while committing and offence was the same
for both groups; but those who were currently gang members were
much more likely to have carried a weapon of some sort (see Figure
4)
Figure 4
GANG MEMBERS' POSSESSION OF GUNS COMPARED
TO OTHER WEAPONS (AS % OF EACH GROUP)
(Source: Bennett and Holloway, 2004)
That is, on the one hand, insofar as the use
of knives is an aggravating factor in several distinctive types
of crime, reducing knife crime may depend on the effectiveness
of strategies to reduce robberies, domestic violence etc and the
tactics involved need to be geared to the particular local characteristics
of the problem. On the other, the use of knives in any of these
contexts cannot be treated in isolation from the use of weapons
more generally. It seems that the use of weapons may indeed have
been on the increase for over a decade and, as such, may have
been a contributory factor in the rise in serious violence. Knives
may account for a significant proportion of the weapons in question
insofar as they are routinely available; but when seen in this
wider context, reducing the level of knife crime—and/or
knife carrying—may simply result in displacement. That is,
the trend in serious violence may be unaffected because the same
offences may instead be perpetrated using other types of weapon.
Indeed, it is already commonly perceived that the sorts of individuals
who routinely seek to impose their demands on others by violence
and by threatening violence have for some time been brutalizing
particular breeds of dog to serve this purpose (see, for example,
Guardian 27 September 2007). With a live weapon of this
type in their legitimate possession, they may no longer feel the
need to risk being caught carrying a knife.
The relationship between knife-carrying and knife
crime
Knife carrying and knife crime are necessarily
linked inasmuch as knife crime can only be perpetrated if someone
is carrying (or is easily able to pick up) a knife. However, the
two are not synonymous. Thus, for example, the proportion of young
people in the Youth Justice Board's 2004 Youth Survey who said
they had ever carried a knife was 38% in the case of respondents
in mainstream education, rising to 76% of young people excluded
from school. However, asked if they had ever used a knife,
only 3% of the former and 14% of the latter said they had. Given
that the excluded group is de facto a group at much higher
risk of offending it is not surprising that a higher proportion
admitted to carrying a knife and that the minority among these
who had actually used one was twice as large as it was for their
counterparts in mainstream education (ie 18% of self-declared
knife carriers in the excluded group said they had used the knife
compared to 9% in the mainstream sample). This would suggest that—even
in a high risk group of young people—less than a fifth of
knife carriers have actually perpetrated knife crime.
Leaving aside those who carry knives legitimately
in the course of their work, people who do so might usefully be
thought of as falling broadly into three categories. In each case
(see above) it must be borne in mind that those concerned may
also carry other weapons and that, if they deem the risk of carrying
a knife too high, they may simply resort to other alternatives.
It is also important to point out that—despite the intense
interest of the media and policy makers in young people in this
context, knife crime is not perpetrated exclusively by young people
and the involvement of young people may vary according to the
type of offence (see also above). Two of the London boroughs covered
by the GOL analysis had undertaken some analysis of their own
local knife crime profile (though analysts complained that they
had little scope for this type of work because knife crime at
the time was "not a priority"). In one, 40% of knife
crime was carried out by young people aged 20 and under. The other
had undertaken a more detailed breakdown and gave an identical
figure (ie 40% aged 20 and under) in the case of "knife-enabled"
assaults but this rose to around 70% in the case of "knife-enabled"
robberies.
The three broad groups of knife carriers may
be conceived of as follows:
(a) A relatively small hard core of knife carriers
comprises individuals who are consciously prepared proactively
to use weapons in order to threaten, intimidate, main and,
even murder.
(b) A second group comprises individuals who
carry weapons ostensibly for protection only but whose lifestyles
frequently involve them in confrontational situations where the
risk of serious violence is heightened by the extent to which
both they and their protagonists are armed.
(c) Thirdly, there are individuals who fear for
their safety because of the local presence of people in the other
two groups. They have no wish to engage in violence and endeavour
as far as possible to avoid it but they would feel more vulnerable
still if they were confronted by one or more individuals in groups
(a) or (b) without any means of defending themselves.
The role of local factors (and related issues
of ethnic "disproportionality")
Those responsible for knife crime are much more
likely to belong to groups (a) and (b) above rather than group
(c); but all three groups are likely to be very much larger than
average in areas which (irrespective of the current perceived
level of knife crime) have always been areas where violence is
much higher than average.
It is often difficult to convey to policy makers
the impact that growing up in this type of environment has on
young people, aware as they are from a very early age of the likelihood
of being affected by serious violence—whether by witnessing
it at first hand or because they know someone within their family
or social network who has been a victim of serious violence or
simply because they know other people (including classmates) who
have been affected in these ways. The inescapable fear this engenders
is reinforced by low expectations that the police will be willing
or able to protect them. Ironically, the police in these areas
may themselves be handicapped in turn by low reporting rates and,
in the cases which do come to their attention, (as the Damilola
Taylor case well illustrated) they will experience particular
difficulties in getting people who know about the incident to
co-operate in its investigation. Prosecutions, in turn, may ultimately
fail because of a lack of reliable witnesses who are prepared
to come forward and give evidence in court.
In such areas, lack of co-operation with the
police is not driven exclusively (or even primarily) by distrust
and perceptions of racism. Far more important are social norms
about not "not grassing" and "sorting things out
for yourself", compounded by the fear of reprisals—for
someone is sure to be blamed where local intelligence results
in police action, even if that intelligence was given anonymously.
Young people in such areas internalize these norms very early
on, along with ways of managing their fears (on behalf not only
of themselves but frequently also younger siblings). The most
obvious ways are to cultivate a hard image and/or to place oneself
under the protection of others who have a "reputation".
This may not only mean proving that you are willing to use violence
to defend yourself or that you can, as necessary call on "back-up"
to this end. It also means showing that you are prepared to avenge
real or imagined slights in this way.
Currently the youth populations of areas like
this are disproportionately black and this means that, on average,
black young people are significantly over-represented both as
victims and as perpetrators of knife crime. However, it is also
important to point out both that the problem is not exclusive
to black people and that the reason for their over-involvement
is not to do with ethnicity as such. My colleague Chris Hale undertook
some very sophistical statistical modeling of the overall level
and rate of increase in street crime across London in our 2003
study for the Youth Justice Board. This showed that, despite the
very marked over-representation of black people in this type of
crime, once a full range of relevant socio-economic factors were
taken into account, these entirely accounted for the variations
in street crime between the 32 London boroughs and the ethnic
make-up of their population made no significant difference once
these other factors were controlled for.
TACKLING KNIFE
CRIME
Since last May in particular, special efforts
have been made to tackle the problem of knife crime, with additional
resources made available for this purpose as part of a high profile
campaign led by the Home Office. However, the main focus of this
campaign has been knife carrying rather than knife crime
as such. The broad strands of the campaign have relied on a mixture
of education and enforcement, the latter in particular resulting
in claims (including figures presented to this inquiry) of impressive
results in terms of the numbers of knives seized and arrests made
for knife carrying. However, figures for knife crime have recently
published by the Home Office which cover the period July to September
2008—that is, the quarter which followed the launch of the
campaign and which began once the campaign had had enough time
to establish itself. Although the figures themselves (see above)
may be subject to a considerable margin of recording error, they
provide no clear evidence that a strategy which focuses on knife
carrying is having a commensurate impact on knife crime as such.
Unfortunately the bulletin in question omits comparative data
on both actual and grievous bodily harm involving knives; but
the figures show an increase of 10% in knife related murders compared
to the same period in the previous year as well as an 8% increase
in attempted murders and an 18% increase in knife-related robberies.
(The latter figure seems especially telling inasmuch as the figures
for the previous quarter—ie the one which straddled the
launch of the knife crime initiative—had actually shown
a decrease of 4% over the previous year).
A high profile strategy was clearly needed to
reassure the public that the problem of knife crime was being
taken very seriously following a series of tragic deaths of young
people. However, in the light of my analysis of the nature of
the problem in the previous section, it is arguable, on the one
hand, that the approach to date will not have an impact on the
problem which is durable and commensurate with the resources committed
to it. On the other, aspects of the strategy (and in particular
the use of section 60 searches) may prove counter productive,
as well as having very serious and much wider implications for
civil liberties and police-community relations than appears hitherto
to have been recognized.
Educational approaches
Educational approaches depend largely on messages
about:
— the physical and emotional impact
of knife crime on victims and their families;
— the fact that carrying a knife is
illegal; and
— the notion that (because of the risk
both of unintended injury and of criminal sanctions) it is safer
not to carry a knife.
These messages are likely to have no impact
on people in group (a). Individuals in group (b)—especially
the type of young people for whom peer influences may be inordinately
important—may be unwilling to disarm if they feel this means
losing face and also as long as they believe others, including
their potential protagonists, are still carrying knives. Meanwhile,
ironically, the increased attention knife crime has received as
a result of the campaign, coupled with ongoing reports of serious
woundings and murders, has itself been having a significant impact
on the level of fear amongst young people in particular. In these
circumstances, it is very difficult to persuade those in group
(c) that they are actually safer without any means of defending
themselves and the danger is currently that their heightened level
of fear will actually result in more arming themselves
in some way; for they are far more fearful of the potential consequences
of these encounters than they are of being caught by the police.
Enforcement
Enforcement clearly has an important role to
play in breaking the cycle described above, especially where it
is effectively targeted at those in group (a). Simply catching
and convicting those responsible for knife crime can only be seen
as a short term measure which will need following through over
the medium to long term if it is to have any real impact on the
problem (see next section). However, effectively targeted enforcement
of this type is essential to give people in group (c) the reassurance
they need if they are to be persuaded to venture out unarmed.
With group (b) similarly enforcement is essential
in the case of those who have actually committed knife crime.
However, the impact of intensive enforcement activity on this
group to uncover knife carrying is uncertain. They present a classic
disarmament dilemma in the sense that, even if the will is there,
no-one may be prepared to take the first step; but this group
also presents particular cultural challenges where those involved
see a readiness to use violence as essential to their credibility
and where, if they choose to abandon their knives, they may simply
resort to using other types of weapon.
Group (c) is by far the least likely of the
three to be responsible for knife crime; yet, ironically, they
may be especially vulnerable to intensive enforcement activity
to uncover knife carrying. Being less street wise than either
group (a) or (b) they may actually be at greater risk of getting
caught (and thereby criminalized) than either. If they feel that
have been unfairly targeted while the people they are scared of
remain untouched, this will do nothing for their faith in the
criminal justice system but may make it even less likely that
they will share information with the police which could help in
the development of truly intelligence-led strategies for identifying
and apprehending those responsible for knife crime.
Section 60 searches
Viewed in this context, there is a particular
danger that the police's use of search powers under section 60
of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act is not only
highly inefficient but could also prove counter-productive. In
addition, its current use on a quasi-permanent basis by the Metropolitan
Police in particular is of questionable legitimacy and has questionable
implications which go well beyond its effectiveness in tackling
knife crime.
My study of searches in London under section
1 of the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) showed clearly
that the discovery of offensive weapons of any sort was highly
dependent on the use of police search powers. However, it also
recognized that a difficult balance had to be struck between the
effective use of the power and its potential for alienating members
of the public. Even in the case of section 1 searches, which require
officers to have "reasonable grounds for suspicion"
in each case, the arrest rate is low (at most around 15%) and
a fairly high proportion of all such searches inevitably involve
innocent members of the public going about their lawful business.[54]
For a complex variety of reasons a disproportionate number of
section 1 searches fall on black people; so the corollary of this
is that innocent black people going about their lawful business
are disproportionately searched by the police. Moreover, the fact
that this has now been the case for several generations (dating
back to the use of the local pre-PACE search powers which triggered
the Brixton riots in 1981) means that police searches have long
been a running sore in police-community relations, especially
where black people are concerned.
Unlike section 1 searches, the police power
of search under section 60 of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public
Order Act is not routinely available to any officer at any time;
but where it is authorized, section 60 searches do not require
reasonable grounds for suspicion. The power was introduced in
1994 when it was argued that the police needed additional search
powers to deal with violence associated with large crowd events
such as football matches where serious outbreaks of violence were
anticipated. While its scope has subsequently been widened slightly
(including by the Knives Act 1997), no change has been
made to key limitations on the use of the power as laid down in
the 1994 Act. That is, it can be used only in specific
designated areas; and its use in these specified areas must formally
be authorized by a senior officer for no more than a 24 hour period
which may be extended to 36 hours in exceptional circumstances.
Given the far more random and speculative nature
of section 60 searches, statistics published by the Home Office
(and more recently by the Ministry of Justice) confirm that the
arrest rate from section 60 searches is very much lower than for
section 1; so, by inference, their impact on innocent members
of the public is much greater. Over the 10 year period from 1996-97,
the arrest rate from section 60 searches has never been higher
than 6.5% and, at its lowest, it fell to just below 3%. Importantly
for current purposes, the majority of these arrests are not
for possession of offensive weapons, although a separate figure
is also given for the numbers of people who were found carrying
such a weapon even though this may not have constituted the main
grounds for their arrest.
There has been a very significant increase in
the use of section 60 since the turn of the century. The total
recorded for all police forces in 2000-01 had risen to 11,330
from just under 7,000 a year previously; but it had leapt to 44,400
by 2002-03 and, with one exception, has since grown steadily year-on-year
to a peak of nearly 45,000 in 2006-07. Since it passed the 44,000
mark, the proportion of section 60 searches finding anyone with
an offensive weapon has fluctuated between 3.5% to 0.7%; and in
the last year for which figures are currently available (ie 2006-07)
the national average figure was 1.6%.
Several years ago, the West Midlands Police
led the field in making increasing use of the section 60 power;
and it became apparent that in doing so they were taking a very
elastic approach to the criteria for granting the power. In effect,
they were authorizing its use on a quasi-permanent basis in some
areas but getting around the time limit by rotating it by a matter
of a few streets once each authorization lapsed. The force was
successfully challenged on this by the Independent Police Complaints
Commission and their recorded use of section 60 searches has since
dropped considerably. Between 2004-05 and 2006-07, the number
of section 60 searches in the West Midlands fell by nearly three
quarters. Over the same two year period, however, it had more
than quadrupled in the MPS from 3,480 to 16,917. So the decision
by the MPS formally to announce in May 2008 that section 60 searches
would form a major strand of its response to the knife murders
of young people in the capital (Operation Blunt 2) might simply
be seen as a further extension of this trend. However, the announcement
specifically referred to officers using section 60 powers in 10
London boroughs as though the power was available with
no time limit in these areas for as long as the police chose to
use it. In other words, the MPS, with a very high profile, seemed
to be adopting precisely the tactics for which their West Midlands
colleagues had already been indicted by the IPCC.
Not only is the use of section 60 in this way
of questionable legality, it represents an intensive and inefficient
use of police resources and one which may prove counter-productive.
Although the measure has been presented as a tactic for preventing
knife crime, its purpose is to tackle knife carrying
and, for the reasons given above, the impact on knife crime
as such may be minimal. Even as a tactic for uncovering knife
carrying, it is hugely inefficient; for, if the 2006-07 figures
are anything to go by, officers will need to conduct over 100
section 60 searches before they find one person carrying "an
offensive weapon or dangerous instrument" of any sort.[55]
Out of nearly 17,000 section 60 searches in 2006-07, the MPS found
just 136 individuals carrying what officers decided were offensive
weapons and dangerous instruments. And, in terms of arrests for
possession of offensive weapons, random section 60 searches produced
just 93 such arrests compared to 3,235 which resulted from section
1 searches which were conducted on the basis of reasonable grounds
for suspicion. The other side of this coin, of course, is 16,864
such searches were conducted on individuals who were not carrying
an offensive weapon; and the impact on black people is very highly
disproportionate. According to the section 95 figures for the
same year (Ministry of Justice 2008) black people were involved
in 36% of section 1 searches in London which was three times their
estimated presence in the population. In the case of section 60
searches, however, the figure was 52%.
In a force which still bears the scars from
the use of similar swamping tactics in 1981, their current use
of section 60 on the pretext of tackling knife crime seems not
only a highly inefficient use of resources but represents a very
high risk strategy. The innocent people who are searched will
very disproportionately be black and may be further confirmed
in their long-standing mistrust of the police, compounding the
sense that the police's role is primarily to harass rather than
to protect them. With this goes an implicit risk that they will
be more likely to feel that they have to protect themselves. Meanwhile,
of the tiny minority who are found with a weapon, many
(possibly most) will have been carrying weapons without any intention
of using them but simply because they feel more than ever unprotected
on the streets and may find themselves with a criminal record
as a result, knowing that the people they most fear are still
at large and may appear to them relatively untouchable. Importantly
this means that large numbers of people who are targeted by the
police in this scattergun fashion may actually be less likely
to co-operate with them in developing a more efficient, intelligence-led
approach which focuses more narrowly and strategically on those
who are mainly responsible for knife crime.
Finally, a much wider cause for concern is that
the way in section 60 searches have come to be used for nearly
a year now in London effectively risks "normalizing"
public expectations that there are certain areas where the police
have the right to search any one at any time without needing any
reason for doing so. This was surely not the intention of parliament
in passing this legislation; and nor has parliament been given
(or taken) any opportunity to review the legislation to decide
whether it should be amended to this effect. Rather this extension
of the use of section 60 and the serious erosion of civil liberties
which it implies is occurring by a process of "creep"
spearheaded by the MPS—but apparently with the endorsement
of the Home Office—on the pretext of tackling knife crime,
despite the absence of any hard evidence that it is effective
for this purpose and regardless of the serious risks involved
for police-community relations, including the potential for triggering
public disorder.
CONCLUSION: TOWARDS
A NEW
APPROACH
The use of knives cannot be tackled independently
of the use of weapons more generally and this, in turn, cannot
be divorced from the wider issue of violence. Young people appear
disproportionately to be involved in knife crime, although given
that the peak age for offending of any sort has always been around
the mid- to late teens, this fact may be less surprising than
it first seems. It is important, nonetheless, to bear in mind
that adults may be responsible for more than half of all knife
crime and that adults have a profound influence on the extent
to which young people become involved in violence. The literature
suggests (see FitzGerald, Stevens and Hale 2004) that this may
be especially true of the small minority young people (referred
to as Early Onset offenders) whose experience in their early years
significantly increases the likelihood of their becoming persistent,
serious violent offenders in later life. It is this group which
may be thought of as comprising Group (a) above. Meanwhile, the
literature also suggests that a much larger group of Adolescent
Onset offenders account for the bulk of violent crime committed
by young people, that peer influences are more important in the
case of this group and that most of those involved will eventually
grow out of this type of behaviour. These are likely to comprise
Group (b) above and, as has been suggested, the group tends to
be larger and the negative peer pressures at work much greater
in certain areas where overall levels of violence have always
been higher than average and the prevailing adult norms for settling
disputes may involve violence or the threat of violence.
It may nonetheless be appropriate for policy
to focus on young people insofar as effective interventions with
this group stand more chance of breaking the cycle of violence.
However, even here, the literature on juvenile violence suggests
that short-term enforcement measures (necessary as these may be)
will have little lasting impact on the problem. What is needed
is a holistic "public health" approach to preventing
violence. A public health approach comprises short-, medium- and
long-term measures which must be designed to complement each other
(ie rather than risking the short-term measures undermining more
durable gains in the medium to long-term) and it conceives of
prevention at three levels, as follows.
Primary prevention refers to generic
approaches aimed at tackling the root causes of violence and associated
knife-carrying. They may be conceived of broadly in terms of social,
economic and neighbourhood (or community) level policies. More
specifically, they can also usefully be thought of in terms of
strengthening the type of provision which, on the one hand, harness
young people's energies and channels them constructively and,
on the other, instills in them the confidence to deal with conflict
without the need to resort to violence but, as necessary, to call
on appropriate adults (including the police) to deal with violence
or the threat of violence knowing that effective action will be
taken and that they will be protected from reprisals. Similarly,
primary prevention would invest in improving systems which should
offset the early risks faced by some young people of developing
violent tendencies, including parental neglect, abuse and exposure
to serious violence (including witnessing domestic violence).
Secondary prevention concerns measures
which target those whose behaviour already identifies them as
being at risk of engaging in violence. In addition to the early
onset group who may require intensive support from an early age,
this paper would suggest that in some areas a relatively large
segment of the youth population is at risk of involvement in whatever
type of violent behaviour is currently in vogue—whether
it be street crime, knife crime or any other type of offending
behaviour. (As one boy put it to me in a focus group on street
crime: "It's not that it's right, Miss—it's
just, like, everyone around here does it".) In this context,
simply focusing on changing the behaviour of "at risk"
individuals may largely miss the point since the challenge
is to change peer group norms. This will require, for example,
being able to "sell" alternative forms of dispute resolution
with credibility as well as finding constructive outlets for anger
and aggression, as well as the profound fears which these often
mask (rather than ignoring or hoping simply to supress these).
It is possible that educational approaches to tackling knife crime
may provide a way in to this type of work; but on their
own their impact may be limited, especially if they are restricted
to messages about knives being illegal or the notion that you
are safer without one.
Tertiary prevention involves the actions
taken with regard to those who have actually perpetrated knife
crime (or used weapons of any sort in offences of violence). Clearly
these need to be identified and caught in the first place; so
good intelligence is essential and (as suggested above) action
which fails to cultivate but actually alienates potential sources
of such intelligence is counter-productive. Once caught, though,
it is important that the subsequent sanctions significantly reduce
the risk of the individuals concerned re-offending. Here the literature
suggests a very wide range of promising interventions but concludes
that the most effective are "wrap around" sentences
which are tailored to the particular needs and risk factors of
individual offenders. These types of intervention typically involve
close partnership working between a range of relevant agencies,
including professionals outside the criminal justice system and,
as such, represent an ideal type which may not readily be available
in most local areas to meet present need. It is, though, worth
pointing out that anger management courses, for example, or specific
anti-knife-crime programmes may be more or less effective with
some offenders than others but that we know relatively little
about their effectiveness. Much more rigorous evaluation is needed
than appears currently to be available in Britain on what programmes
work best in what circumstances in reducing violent offending
by young people under the supervision of Youth Offending Teams.
One important finding from the literature which is worth highlighting
in this context, though, is that only a handful of interventions
have been proved not to be effective in reducing violent
behaviour by juvenile offenders. They include "boot camps",
"scared straight" and "short sharp shock"
approaches.
Finally, while national bodies may give a lead
and provide an enabling framework for this public health approach,
its effective implementation will depend on partnership working
by a large number of different agencies at local level. They need
to be able to tailor their approach to local circumstances in
terms of:
— the specific dimensions of the problem
of knife crime in their area;
— the particular partnership structures
which are best suited locally to deliver joined up solutions;
and
— the resources available to the agencies
involved.
These resources are finite and many of the relevant
agencies may currently be facing the prospect of no growth or
even retrenchment. Many are also currently undergoing major change
and reorganization, not least in the wake of the Children Act
2004. In these circumstances simply adding new requirements for
tackling knife crime to their priorities and expecting them to
produce results in the short term as a result of being given relatively
modest amounts of money which is time-limited and ring-fenced
for this purpose is unlikely to be effective. Rather, tackling
knife crime—in the context of the wider, related issues
of weapon use and violence more generally—needs to be mainstreamed
through local partnerships in the context of the wider ongoing
responsibilities of the agencies involved, including their responsibility
for delivering on the second of the "Every Child Matters"
outcomes which is to enable children and young people to "stay
safe".
February 2009
SOURCES AND
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51 The British Crime Survey is seriously limited as
a means of capturing trends in violence in particular. This is
not only because the survey does not include respondents aged
under 16 but also because the main victims of violent crime tend
to be young men living in high crime inner city areas, a demographic
group which all household surveys have for decades found it increasingly
difficult to access. Back
52
An internal review of knife crime statistics within the MPS in
November 2004 revealed a relatively high proportion both of mistaken
entries and of offences which should have been flagged as knife
crimes but were not. Back
53
The chart tracks serious violence only for two main reasons. The
first is that the figures for recorded violence in general were
seriously affected by changes to the Home Office counting rules
in 1998. The second is that, by contrast, the figures for serious
violence have been collected consistently over the long term (until
2002-03) and it is the upturn in these which may directly be associated
with an increase in the use of weapons. Back
54
In the course of the research, scrutiny of a large number of searches
which had not resulted in an arrest revealed that 50% of
both the white and black individuals searched had no criminal
record. Back
55
In presenting evidence that the tactic has been "successsful"
the MPs often appear to use the obfuscating ploy of publishing
the numbers of weapons they have found instead of the number of
individuals found to be carrying them. Back
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